look back in this list a couple of pages for the list of SDV channels or Switched Digital Channels. at my last count, there was around 150 or so of them at least in the austin area. Your area may be different. Austin is big on SDV, other TWC locations, not so much. One reason I'm considering making a switch to D*

Quote:

Originally Posted by jtowens

I've had Tivos for years and love them. I recently purchased an HD model from Woot! and did my research on cable cards. I've had a _horrible_ experience with TWC getting the cards installed, similar to the problems others have mentioned.

I understand that I'm limited to one-way services, and that I can't get VOD, guides, etc. I realized today however that I also wasn't receiving a certain ranges of digital channels. I received conflicting info from different TWC people. The last person I talked to stated I "would not be able to receive channels 100-201" and that "while they are standard digital cable channels their cable cards did not support this as they required 2-way service."

Is this really true? They had a lot of problems setting this up so I don't trust what I'm being told. Thanks!

I've had Tivos for years and love them. I recently purchased an HD model from Woot! and did my research on cable cards. I've had a _horrible_ experience with TWC getting the cards installed, similar to the problems others have mentioned.

I understand that I'm limited to one-way services, and that I can't get VOD, guides, etc. I realized today however that I also wasn't receiving a certain ranges of digital channels. I received conflicting info from different TWC people. The last person I talked to stated I "would not be able to receive channels 100-201" and that "while they are standard digital cable channels their cable cards did not support this as they required 2-way service."

Is this really true? They had a lot of problems setting this up so I don't trust what I'm being told. Thanks!

Jason

Jason,

Where are you located? I can't send you a private message or email. I had the same problem you did but it is resolved now and have some information that may help.

Yea, the great news is the RAL/DUR TWC isn't using SDV yet. The bad news is that they are copy protecting every digital channel except for the networks and since they have changed scifi, foxsports south, and other analog channels to digital, they have put them on copy protection. I just realized tonight that scifi was blocked which means I can't transfer video to the PC. This is really p***ing me off now and I don't get mad often. We need to start a petition or a boycott against TWC of RAL/DUR and tell them they can't block every channel. Maybe Tivo and the FCC need to get involved. I just love how TWC commercials say they are customer loyal and all. They sure do show that loyalty when the do something like this.

The issue you describe also hoses multi-room viewing. Nothing can be transferred either to another Tivo or through Tivotogo. I am pissed.

The TW rep is at my house now - has been for about an hour. He said he does one or two card installations a year and the last one took about 3 hours. He's friendly, but not very happy about the prospect of installation taking so long. He tried to sell me on DVR or on the digital box without DVR, but I said I liked my Tivo. The first card installed fine quickly (as far as I could tell), but the second card is undergoing a firmware update - and has been for about 40 minutes so far.

Update: the second technician is now here. He's asked me about Tivo service, the cost, etc. and is bragging about how much better it is than DVR. We're on the third cable card, which is going through another lengthy firmware update.

Update 2: We're now approaching three hours. Looks like I'm working from home today. How long does the firmware update take?

Update 3: The rep is now gone. He arrived at 8:30 this morning, took an hour for lunch, and left at 4:00 this afternoon. He tried about 8 SA cablecards. The card in slot one is working beautifully, but the card in slot two is only receiving a few of the HD channels. I'll call them tomorrow to see if they can do something over the computer.

By the end of the day, he said he was impressed with Tivo and might look into getting one for himself. He also said that TW had M-Cards in this area, but they didn't advertise that for some reason. I don't know why he didn't bring an M-Card with him to my house. Anyway, I'm pleased with card 1 and mostly pleased with card 2, but a whole day of work to get them to work is ridiculous!

The TW rep is at my house now - has been for about an hour. He said he does one or two card installations a year and the last one took about 3 hours. He's friendly, but not very happy about the prospect of installation taking so long. He tried to sell me on DVR or on the digital box without DVR, but I said I liked my Tivo. The first card installed fine quickly (as far as I could tell), but the second card is undergoing a firmware update - and has been for about 40 minutes so far.

Update: the second technician is now here. He's asked me about Tivo service, the cost, etc. and is bragging about how much better it is than DVR. We're on the third cable card, which is going through another lengthy firmware update.

Update 2: We're now approaching three hours. Looks like I'm working from home today. How long does the firmware update take?

we had the firmware update on 2 scientific atlanta S-cards and they took about 15mins each.

if it makes you feel any better, the tech was at my house for a total of 4hrs trying to get a variety of S-cards & M-cards to work in our new tivoHD. we ended up getting 2 S-cards to work, and they've been working great for a couple weeks now.

Ok, I have searched through this thread but not found what I am looking for. I will be moving into TW area at the end of April, I have a Tivo HD. I called customer service to see if they could tell me what channels are on SDV now and it took about 4 tries and two trips to the supervisor office before the guy half understood what I was talking about. He said I would get all the channels but I am not inclined to trust his advice.

Can someone who currently has TW in Orange County, CA give me a list of what channels (HD or otherwise) that you can not tune on your Tivo with cablecards.

I just got 2 S cards installed yesterday - TW Southeast Wisconsin. The guys showed up and said he thought he was just swapping boxes and missed the part on the work order about CableCards. He had to drive back to Racine (about 30 minuteseach way) to get them. He was really nice about it, though. I told him to look for M cards (he had no idea what I was talking about, as he had never installed CCs before.), and to grab several. He came back right away, reinforced that he has never done this before, and got to it. He only had S cards. After about an hour he said eerything was working, but the cards would still need to be service enabled. He left and said he woul dcall me back later. AFter about two hours it seemed that one was working but not the other. He called me and I let him know. He called me back 15 minutes later and said, "try again." I did and everything worked. So far, so good, and I really think the picture quality is better with the CC decoders than with the SA HD box. I see much less pixelation (so far), anyway. All in all, a pretty good experience - far better than I would have expected.

hey - just wondering how you are liking the TiVo so far? I'm in SE WI also and am really sick of the PoS SA8300 DVR and want to take the TiVo plunge

Checking in if anyone has sage wisdom with installs with TWC in South Pasadena CA? I have had 3 different attempts over the past month with no luck each time. I was originally in the Eagle Rock, CA district and they were a former Adelphia area, so the system is different, they had M Cards and I understand that So. Pas doesn't.

The problem too is that they seem to NEVER have any cable cards available.

Any words or help would be greatly appreciated.

mb1010

After 6 total visits, and nearly 20 cable cards, I have 4 working cards in my 2 Series 3 machines. Thanks to the lead tech getting involved, who actually went to the training on setting up the Series 3!

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I'm in Mooresville, NC. Cable Co (MI-Connection) is now owned by the city/some sort of organization, used to be Adelphia, TW ran till the city decided to run it.

I got my first THD in Nov or Dec and got the 2 cards working in it pretty easy. I had channels drop once in a while and reseated or rebooted and everything would be fine for a while. I got my 2nd THD in Jan and when I got the 2 cards for it we never could get them working. On top of that one of the cards in the 1st box quit working too.. Most of what I watch is on networks (which I get on all of them) and I hadn't had time to mess with it till the other day. After a few hrs a day for a couple days they sent someone out (which I knew wasn't going to change anything). He messed with it for a couple hrs with no luck and I thought to ask if they had MCards yet and they did. He ran to the office, picked up 2 MCards and we had both working in less than 30 minutes. I've had absolute 0 issues since switching to the MCards..

We're going to be moving across the neighborhood soon, and I'm trying to decide if it's worth $11/mo (and maybe some freebies I probably won't watch) to get new service discounts but have to deal with getting new cablecards and a new box, or if I should just transfer my current service to the new address and hope the cablecard pairing sticks?
New house already has cable in all the rooms so there's no installing to do unless the sellers do something stupid like rip out all the splitters and amps that somebody seems to have spent a few hours neatly installing in a closet.

A related question: does anyone know if the $11.40/mo Surf and Watch bundle discount expires or if it's good for the life of the account?

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I just read like 25 pages of this thread and am just as mad a TWC as when I started, but glad to know that I'm not the only one having issues (that means they will fix it right?). I too have had useless technicians and wasted days with 4-5 of them trying to figure out how to put it in ( I ended up doing it. I mean it's not that hard right?) but I still only get limited channels on cable card 2 and can't get the switched channels on ither. Still though this Tivo HD is 100% better than the box the cable company ships out. I will be watching for the updates about the switch dongle.

I must be extremely lucky. I got my TiVoHD, went through the guided setup and got all my updates and when the technician showed up, he put an MCard in slot 1 and after about 30-45 mins waiting for the office to activate the card, it was up and running flawlessly. Now I'm anxiously awaiting the tuner resolver because Time Warner North Texas just added 12 channels to their HD Line-up, but all are supposed to be SDV. Wonder what other channels will be hosed by them introducing SDV to the masses here in the Metroplex.

After reading all the problems from this thread, I was very worried about moving from my Series2 to TivoHD, but I got a new HDTV so it was either the crappy TWC box or Tivo. I used the TWC box for a week and couldn't stand it anymore so I got a TivoHD. When I called TWC, at first the rep had no idea what a "CableCard" was, so she got her supervisor, who thought I was installing it into a TV set, even though I kept saying "Tivo". She wanted to let me know that once it was installed I "couldn't use the TWC box anymore". So, even supervisors can be clueless. I finally convinced them that yes, I did want a CableCard. They said it was a $43 truck roll charge plus other various charges per month (I think around $10 or so). I then asked for a "MCard" and they were firm that they had no "MCards", and put me on hold because I think they were tired of talking to me (I had been on the phone with them for 45 minutes so far, where probably 35 minutes was on hold). After another 10 minutes on hold I gave up on them and called back, but this time I got transferred to someone who not only knew what a CableCard was but also knew what Tivo was. I wish I could tell you guys how I got to this person, but I didn't do anything differently, I think it's just luck of the draw on who you get on the phone, if the first line rep knows a knowledgeable person to transfer you to. If you get someone clueless when you call, it might be better to ask for someone else or just hang up and call again.

This knowledgeable rep set everything up and scheduled a truck roll, and said they indeed did not have any MCards, all they had in stock here in Raleigh was SCards. What can I do? No choice. So I said ok, fine.

However, when the installer got here, it was a contractor, and apparently in Raleigh the contractors have their own stock of CableCards and do not use TWC's stock of cards. They brought both 2 SCards and a MCard, as they said they have plenty of MCards themselves. So they wrote down the #s from the MCard, put it in, and called their TWC number. The person on the phone took the numbers, and said to watch the "EMM count". So we checked that in the Tivo MCard screen, and it kept going up. The person on the phone said it "had to get to 500 or above to unlock all the channels", although I was getting channels immediately after the EMM count got above 0. Anyway, it took maybe 15 minutes for it to get to 500, at which point the installers said thanks and left! Easy as pie.

Since then it's worked fine for me, no problems at all or dropped channels. Since I still have the old TWC box also, I can compare channels, and there are some channels I get with the TWC box but not the Tivo, I think it's 290-300 or so, and all channels above 1000 (which is only a dozen local duplicated channels, which I do get in the 200 range). And of course, all the "on demand" channels, I don't get.

If you get someone clueless when you call, it might be better to ask for someone else or just hang up and call again.

Your experience is much like mine: I tried in vain to convince the phone rep, and two supervisors, that M-cards did exist, and that I shouldn't have to pay for two S-card installations. But this all turned out to be irrelevant, because the installer showed up with an M-card and everything went smoothly.

I think the reality is that the phone reps don't know anything, but that's OK, as long as the installation techs know what they're doing. So as long as the installer knows it's a CableCARD/TiVo install, it doesn't matter what the phone rep says.

For what it's worth, my installer told me that S-cards are virtually impossible to get nowadays anyway. So the whole S-card versus M-card thing is apparently a non-issue, at least in Raleigh/Durham.

I must be extremely lucky. I got my TiVoHD, went through the guided setup and got all my updates and when the technician showed up, he put an MCard in slot 1 and after about 30-45 mins waiting for the office to activate the card, it was up and running flawlessly. Now I'm anxiously awaiting the tuner resolver because Time Warner North Texas just added 12 channels to their HD Line-up, but all are supposed to be SDV. Wonder what other channels will be hosed by them introducing SDV to the masses here in the Metroplex.

At least here in Mesquite, the new channels are not SDV yet. I turned on my TV this morning and sure enough all the supposed SDV HD channels were on and working great.

Your experience is much like mine: I tried in vain to convince the phone rep, and two supervisors, that M-cards did exist, and that I shouldn't have to pay for two S-card installations. But this all turned out to be irrelevant, because the installer showed up with an M-card and everything went smoothly.

I think the reality is that the phone reps don't know anything, but that's OK, as long as the installation techs know what they're doing. So as long as the installer knows it's a CableCARD/TiVo install, it doesn't matter what the phone rep says.

For what it's worth, my installer told me that S-cards are virtually impossible to get nowadays anyway. So the whole S-card versus M-card thing is apparently a non-issue, at least in Raleigh/Durham.

As an FYI, TWC Kansas City is going SDV as of 4/14. I received a letter listing all the channels that are moving. Once I get back home, I'll edit this post and list them. From memory, most are not important, though there are several movie channels moving as are four otherwise free HD channels.

Interesting, I have had a Tivo series 2 for 2+ years now and got a TiVo HD in November due to getting a swwet deal from Amazon. I find that the series 2 can get all the digital channels it wants and is willing to share, the TiVo series 3 software blocks virtually everything from sharing. In other words, I can watch things on my TiVo HD that were recorded on my other Tivo but not vice-versa. Is it because of the cable card interface? Or is it the the different rev of the software? Perhaps the cable bos has something to do with removing it? Hmmm.

Interesting, I have had a Tivo series 2 for 2+ years now and got a TiVo HD in November due to getting a swwet deal from Amazon. I find that the series 2 can get all the digital channels it wants and is willing to share, the TiVo series 3 software blocks virtually everything from sharing. In other words, I can watch things on my TiVo HD that were recorded on my other Tivo but not vice-versa. Is it because of the cable card interface? Or is it the the different rev of the software? Perhaps the cable bos has something to do with removing it? Hmmm.

Recordings on your S2 are analog, despite the source having been a digital channel - the STB converted it to analog Svideo or composite, and your TiVo recorded that after re-digitizing it. Thus there are no copy protection flags inherent in those recorded files and your S2 will happily share them.

Conversely, your HD records the digital stream from digital channels directly, with no conversion or recoding, including any copy protection flags set by the cable company or content originator. If those flags say "no copy" then the TiVo will honor that and refuse to allow it to be shared with any other devices.

I was just wondering if we can use the FCC rules to push TWC. I got a TiVo HD in November and found then that the the requisite 2-way channels were not available, but then I found that the HBO and Cinemax Pacific (I'm on the East coast) channels were not available. After a few calls I was told that they were SDV and that I would not be able to receive them. That didn't bother me much since i had a TiVo after all and could look for the shows I wanted on the regular channels. So I still had a full compliment of cahnnels. Then after the first of the year they strted sevral waves of "upgrades to the channels lineup that "added" HD versions of the channels we had (Discover, history etc..) but in actuality, put them on SDV so they were not available. Then they started switching out channels that i already had in HD to SDV and also some others in conventional. I now have less channels available to me than when I strted in November 2007. Is there some angle that we can use vis avis the FCC ruling that cable companies must support the Cable Card standard? I am ready to start giving them a hard time over paying more for less.
Also, does anyone have an update to the Tivo workaround device? We are days away from the "second quarter" but in my experience, when you give a quarter as your target timeframe, then we will most likely no see it until the very end of that quarter. The FCC has to approve all hardware devices and this process is usually backed up for 6 months or more.

At least here in Mesquite, the new channels are not SDV yet. I turned on my TV this morning and sure enough all the supposed SDV HD channels were on and working great.

It appears the new HD channels are just linear broadcasts, 3 per QAM, instead of the SDV rumor that has been going around for the last couple of weeks. I'll gladly take compressed HD over inaccessible HD (Tivo+SDV).

Channel 126 807-Mhz
History HD 745
Golf/VS HD 786

Channel 127 813-Mhz
Food HD 752
HGTV HD 753
FSS HD 787

Channel 128 819-Mhz
CNN HD 740
TBS HD 744
AETV HD 754

Channel 129 825-Mhz
Discovery HD 756
Animal Planet HD 757
NGC HD 771

This must mean TWC has upgraded my area to 860mhz, since all the new channels are over 750mhz.